


We Are Legion

by entanglednow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-23
Updated: 2009-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things should be left in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Legion

Danny checks his phone when he gets back. But he has no messages after the last one from Connor, telling him that they were headed back to the Arc with specimens, which, honestly, is not a word Danny's over-fond of. There's nothing after that, which isn't completely surprising, given that the last anomaly had led somewhere tropical, and apparently ancient.

It'd be nice to be missed occasionally but he's fairly sure the rest of the team have enough of a distraction. And if there weren't any nasty monsters to deal with this time then he's fine with that. Though Connor and Sarah will no doubt be yammering on about whatever interesting things they discover for as long as he can bear to hear it, without locking them both in a supply room.

He pushes the car door shut and makes his way to the entrance. He has his keys half back in his pocket when he realises, belatedly, that there's no guard. Anywhere else there's a chance it could be shoddy security, but not here, never here. Becker wouldn't allow it.

Danny jogs to the building, there's little point avoiding the CCTV they'd have seen him come in already. He finds the main doors unlocked, one of them caught just faintly on the other. He pushes them open.

The two guards inside are dead. Slumped against the walls on either side, like something pushed them there. There are no slash marks, no bullet holes and there's no blood. But the whole of their eyes are shining black, no whites, no irises. He checks to make sure it's not all pupil and finds it a wet tacky liquid instead. He's half a second from dragging his shirt up over his mouth when he realises that quarantine procedures would have kicked in if it was a disease. Or someone would have shut up the Arc completely. Someone would have done something, there would have been some warning. The air systems would have infected the Arc at different rates, there would have been time.

Either way, it's probably too late if the bodies are contagious.

Danny straightens and pushes open the door.

It's empty, bright and clean inside like it always is. Cool air trails across his face, a rush from the vents that he no longer quite trusts. He has his gun up and out before he goes through, takes quiet measured steps through both sets of doors.

He finds three more corpses.

Medical technicians by the look of it, and there's an itch at the back of his neck that's quietly panicking under the growing suspicion that they'd brought some sort of pathogen back with them. Some sort of disease, deadly and vicious, but he's taking no chances. There are too many people that want what's inside and releasing a short lived disease would be a perfect way to take over the Arc.

Danny reaches the lab as quickly as he can, shoes making barely any noise on the slick white floor. Another body has fallen just outside, coat spread out around them like they'd fallen, almost graceful. But the woman's mouth is open against the floor in what looks like a scream.

He moves round her, and stops dead in the doorway.

"Oh god, no."

The floor of the lab is covered in broken glass and wet pieces of paper. Connor stares at the ceiling, and black spills out of his eyes like ink, and though there's no question that he's dead Danny still forces himself to lay two fingers against his throat. His skin is cold. Danny takes a breath and it barely gets past his throat. The fact that Connor is dead, and no one is here. No one is with him. He thinks that says something he doesn't want to believe.

He stands, crunches his way through the mess on the floor.

On the other side of the lab Sarah lays like she's fallen asleep at her desk. Danny moves her hair just far enough to see the colour of her eyes. They're not the last, bodies are strewn everywhere, medical technicians, soldiers, engineers, maintenance.

Everyone is dead.

Danny works his way through the Arc, checks every body he comes across. Armed soldiers lay against the white walls, tumbled like skittles, pale and grey with shining black eyes. A graveyard of silent dead, their weapons lay beside them, some of them fired some of them not. It suggests there was something to shoot at. Even if that something was only each other.

One man Danny moves past lays with his mouth open, teeth and tongue stained dark, like that's where this thing forced its way inside.

He doesn't see Becker. He wonders if it's too much to hope that the Captain's still alive.

Danny keeps moving.

He finds Abby in the main corridor, a flash of white-blonde hair and canvas shoes that it hurts to look at. He's less careful when he moves towards her, when he goes down on one knee, and finds her face soft and open, and long gone. She's twisted like she went down hard, like she was running. There's blood at the corner of her mouth, and it's shocking for being the only splash of colour he's seen.

Danny wants to believe it proves that she fought. That she didn't go quietly.

He looks away, forces himself to step past her, and pushes open the main door with a foot.

Becker is standing in the middle of the room.

Danny's flash of relief creeps into tension the moment he notices that his gun is loose in his hand, left to dangle from his fingers in a way that's jarringly out of character.

"Becker?"

The Captain doesn't move, but he's quite clearly not dead and at the moment that's good enough. It's not a disease, that much is obvious now. The walls of the Arc shine furious black, the liquid that coats everything swirling and moving, in a way Danny doesn't want to look at for too long. But doesn't dare look away from in anything but snatches.

He takes a deep, slow breath and moves forward, gun trained on the wet pulse of what is clearly life of some sort.

"Becker?" he says again, tight and too fast, pulse thundering in his throat.

Becker's head sweeps towards the sound of his voice. He turns completely, and when he raises his head his eyes are black.

Danny stops like he's hit a brick wall, all the air bursting out of him. His gun comes up and holds at chest height.

"What are you?"

He can feel the silence like a living thing, a silence that feels utterly devoid of life, and cold sweat creeps across the back of his neck.

"What do you want?" he demands.

"We think we will stay," it tells him.


End file.
